Lately, services and additional functions that are provided by an electronic device (e.g., a mobile terminal) are increasing and diversified. In order to raise the effective value of an electronic device and satisfy users' various demands, various applications that are executable in an electronic device are being developed.
An electronic device can store basic applications developed by a manufacturing company of the electronic device and installed in the electronic device, and additional applications downloaded from an application sales website through the Internet, and execute the applications. The additional applications may have been developed by general developers and registered in the application sales website. Anyone who has developed applications can freely sell the applications to a user of the electronic device through the application sales website. Lately, tens of to hundreds of thousands of applications are offered free or for a cost to an electronic device according to the type of the electronic device.
Accordingly, there is a risk of illegal modification and distribution of applications. Particularly, a problem that information included in application source codes is illegally changed by being decompiled may occur. In order to address the problem, application source codes in which classes, functions, and variable names cannot be easily analyzed have been designed. However, there is still a limitation in completely protecting application source codes.
Also, studies into a method for using security mechanisms to prevent applications from being illegally modified and distributed are conducted, however, there is also a limitation in preventing application sources codes from being illegally forged or modified through being decompiled.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.